Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on November 14, 2008, 03:43:39 am
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http://www.alternet.org/story/106551/
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.
I'm not suprised so many of the illiterate have high school diplomas considering the weak standards in most places. As for the rest, definitely high school dropouts, which isn't surprising considering that I went to a good public school and our graduation rate was only 75%. If it wasn't for all the asian students (which there were a significant minority) that number would be much lower.
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How the **** can you graduate from school unable to read in the first place? How on Earth do you pass your exams?
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I'd be more worried about how they manage to read the street names or bus numbers to get there in the first place. :lol:
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How the **** can you graduate from school unable to read in the first place? How on Earth do you pass your exams?
:hopping: There's a certain state called California. And another called Mississippi. Both of these states have REALLY low standards, especially in inner-city, and urban schools. And that being the worst of it, there's some states that are really damn close.
Some schools pass kids just to get them out of the grade.
And let's remember a nice little doctrie: "No child left behind..." Yep. No one left behind. Can't read, but Great job!
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A full third? Wow.
I have to say I'd want to get corroboration on that figure.
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Yeah i want their soruces, or where they pulled those numbers out of their ass.
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Oh. My. God. Thank you, Mom, thank you, Dad, for giving me books plentiful and lengthy!
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According to someone I know that sat this year's (someone correct my apostrophes!) TEE (Tertiary Entrance Exam - West Australian) English exam, they could have done better if they'd spent the year reading New Idea rather than reading the set texts.
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SAT texts?
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How the **** can you graduate from school unable to read in the first place? How on Earth do you pass your exams?
Dam true. Well, I'd understand a "People don't know how to write" because it means people don't write in a very good way...it happens everywhere...
IMHO bad schools aren't the true source of problems. Schools aren't supposed to teach everything - extra activities do most part of the job. People are illiterate because they don't read anymore. Reading is what really helps.
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How the **** can you graduate from school unable to read in the first place? How on Earth do you pass your exams?
Dam true. Well, I'd understand a "People don't know how to write" because it means people don't write in a very good way...it happens everywhere...
IMHO bad schools aren't the true source of problems. Schools aren't supposed to teach everything - extra activities do most part of the job. People are illiterate because they don't read anymore. Reading is what really helps.
No if public education is pumping out students who are illiterate then something is FUMTU and the school is to blame. Literacy, mathematics, history, science are the basic fundamentals schools are supposed to be teaching it students, things like shop and art are extras. If these stats are correct then the government has to get its ass together and start fixing the problem because this is dangerous.
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No doubt bad schools are a very worrying thing but if you don't tell teenagers to read and show interest on things that really matter(surely not Paris Hilton's habits and crap like that). People would remain illiterate if they don't integrate things learned at school with things learned elsewhere.
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It's really very impressive when you consider that Elementery - Middle- and High school English classes essentially give you the same information, year after year, for over a decade.
If you don't learn the basics eventually, you need to be very, very stupid.
No doubt bad schools are a very worrying thing but if you don't tell teenagers to read and show interest on things that really matter(surely not Paris Hilton's habits and crap like that). People would remain illiterate if they don't integrate things learned at school with things learned elsewhere.
Thank you Mobius, I fully agree. There simply isn't a lot of motivation given for people to educate themselves, partially because Highschool is as boring as ****, takes up a ridiculous amount of time, and gives a ridiculous amount of work; and at the same time only provides a limited amount of education. Also at play is kind of an anti-education movement of people who encourage their kids and kids around them to stay out of it.
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It's really very impressive when you consider that Elementery - Middle- and High school English classes essentially give you the same information, year after year, for over a decade.
If you don't learn the basics eventually, you need to be very, very stupid.
It happens here, too - I studied the Romans(just to give an example) 5, 8 and 11 years ago. Three times. The main intent is to teach children how to study so that they can succeed in the following years.
There also are pathetic stereotypes...people who don't tend to like nerds can really make the difference. They can influence people who like studying and then lead them to become ignorants.
Thank you Mobius, I fully agree. There simply isn't a lot of motivation given for people to educate themselves, partially because Highschool is as boring as ****, takes up a ridiculous amount of time, and gives a ridiculous amount of work; and at the same time only provides a limited amount of education. Also at play is kind of an anti-education movement of people who encourage their kids and kids around them to stay out of it.
Other schools are quite boring as well, let's say that High School strikes the final blow and drains out what remains of anyone's interest.
There's a very bad situation in Italy, the government has cut off many school funds thus leading many thousand teachers to lose their job. Attending Universities is now harder in terms of payment. The are strikes nearly every single day but the government doesn't GAF. They claim they're doing this to purify Italian schools and make them more conclusives by cutting down funds(oh yeah).
Now, teenagers who're willing to attend an University don't know what to do. This situation is severely compromising interest.
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Heh i read the source article sounds like were turning into the Republic of Haven. Though it isn't an actual statistics publication so i'm not sure if its just a scary news tease
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There's nothing inherently wrong with the American school system; so many of them are just poor. The only thing "The Government"™ needs to get its ass in gear about is addressing the needs of impoverished areas-- a project that has become exponentially more daunting since the Bush administration decided to make a bonfire out of all the country's money. Beyond improving socioeconomic conditions so that schools can function the way they're supposed to, I don't think there's anything the government can do about illiteracy.
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The government can only do so much. Sure you can get at the people who are on the "edge" possibly of not caring/dropping out; but if somebody doesn't want to learn, you can't force them. Sadly, the prevalent culture (around here anyway) is that the easy way is the best way. Learning is not "cool".
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No if public education is pumping out students who are illiterate then something is FUMTU and the school is to blame.
And students and parents not caring about their education is somehow not part of the problem? There is plenty of blame to go to the school, sure, but the biggest problem with our system is that the students have absolutly no responsibility and just saying "the school is to blame" reinforces this.
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Learning is not "cool".
This. Learning isn't cool. Being smart isn't cool.
I suppose it might be a sort of escapism. People like to stay ignorant, thinking that their own limited view of the world is all there is. It's much easier than facing reality, taking responsibility... :blah:
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Half my classes are useless, so I just teach myself whatever I need to know.
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And students and parents not caring about their education is somehow not part of the problem? There is plenty of blame to go to the school, sure, but the biggest problem with our system is that the students have absolutly no responsibility and just saying "the school is to blame" reinforces this.
If someone is leaving school as a graduate when they can't read that is the school's fault. They should be leaving school as a failure.
But that's the problem. The school system doesn't want to label these people as failures because that's not good for their self esteem or job prospects (or for the school's reputation as a good school) so instead they pass people only slightly more qualified than a trained chimp.
Once you stop entitling people who don't actually deserve it then you can address the fact that students and their parents don't care about actually getting that title. You can't while everyone gets it though.
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I find it hard to believe these figures, anyway, if they are true, America is not the only place. I have seen schools where all they teach children is how to play fun little adventures on a piece of paper with black and white pictures. Those who don't go to school AND don't get homeschooled won't ladt 5 minutes along the side of the road. Believe me, I know...
"The more man improved his surroundings to make his life easier, the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced to 10 to 15 years of school, just to learn how to survive in this complex and hazerdous habitat they were born into."
Quote taken from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pTPWg_wUw The funniest thing I have probably ever seen.
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Karajorma has it exactly right. It's this sickening concern over poor little Johnny and Susie's self-esteem that's the root of the problem, perhaps even far more so than the very real issue of underfunding in urban areas. My mother teaches at a relatively well-off parochial school, and a few of the stories she's told me about some of the utter ****wit parents she has to deal with would make your head spin. Graduation rates be damned...if someone's a complete failure, let them know it loud and clear. The No Child Left Behind act was perhaps good-intentioned, but as I understand it, it creates more problems of its own by forcing schools to "teach to a test" or prompting states to lower standards in order to maintain the passing rates required to keep up funding levels. There are days when I feel that true education died when we stopped letting nuns smack idiots on the knuckles with rulers.
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(http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/32/worldliteracymapunhd200xv6.png)
I'm sorry, you were saying something?
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(http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/32/worldliteracymapunhd200xv6.png)
I'm sorry, you were saying something?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
A five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in September 1993. It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
(...)
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy. These studies assert that 46% to 51% of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn "significantly" below the threshold poverty level for an individual.
The World Factbook prepared by the CIA claims that the U.S. literacy rate is 99%, but defines literacy as being able to read and write when a person is 15 years old or older. A person who can only read a few hundred — or even a couple of thousand — simple words learned in the first four grades in school is only marginally literate.
Say what?
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Most interesting. I was not familiar with that study, will need to to some checking. I do find the quote "These studies assert that 46% to 51% of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn 'significantly' below the threshold poverty level for an individual" to be particularly confusing though. How exactly are they correlating literacy to income, and how are they defining the poverty line?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States)
Poverty in the United States is cyclical in nature with roughly 12% to 16% living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly 40% falling below the poverty line at some time within a 10 year time span.
That said, I'd like to know what this study would discover about literacy rates on a global level. Perhaps the way literacy has been defined and determined will need some refining.
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The definition for literacy varies from country to country (and even within the same country) obviously. I'd wager my own country should be yellow or orange rather than light blue as the map shows.
Regarding the confusing quote, perhaps I made a mistake not including the previous paragraph, it becomes somewhat clearer.
The study detailed the percentages of U.S. adults who worked full-time, part-time, were unemployed, or who had given up looking for a job and were no longer in the work force. The study also reported the average hourly wages for those who were employed. These data were grouped by literacy level — how well the interviewees responded to material written in English — and indicated that 40 million to 44 million of the 191 million U.S. adults (21% to 23% of them) in the least literate group earned a yearly average of $2,105 and about 50 million adults (25% to 28% of them) in the next-least literate of the five literacy groups earned a yearly average of $5,225 at a time when the U.S. Census Bureau considered the poverty level threshold for an individual to be $7,363 per year.
Basically they're correlating literacy levels with earnings for some rather obvious findings.
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What a surprise, huh? You get what your property taxes pay for.
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Half my classes are useless, so I just teach myself whatever I need to know.
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If yu cn rd ths thn u cnt spl wrth a dmn.
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He's been disemvoweled!
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The definition of literacy has to be considered. Is someone literate if they can read road signs and write letters? If they can't read American and British Literature, are they considered literate?
If somebody can't read Paradise Lost, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean they can't read.
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My mother teaches at a relatively well-off parochial school, and a few of the stories she's told me about some of the utter ****wit parents she has to deal with would make your head spin.
Wouldn't surprise me. I've heard all kinds of stories where a parent has gone up to the school to complain at a teacher for telling off their child when they should have actually been having a go at their child instead. I have no doubt that there are teachers who go to far but there are more parents who don't go far enough.
There are days when I feel that true education died when we stopped letting nuns smack idiots on the knuckles with rulers.
I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem started when kids stopped being scared that they'd get punished a second time if their parents found out they'd been hit.
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That's what kept me on the straight and narrow when i was younger. Parents (should) control a childs life, revoke privilidges and discipline bad behaviour. As stated in previous topics. I'm the most leninet of father figures, mess up though and you'll wish you'd been born without nerve endings. I've got a few years til i have to worry about all that though.
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If yu cn rd ths thn u cnt spl wrth a dmn.
The mind tends to read words as a whole, rather than the actual makeup of the letters in words. Therefore, I have corrected the quote above, as can be seen below.
If yu cn rd ths thn u kw tht I cnt spl wrth a dmn.
:P
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People Easily Fooled by Propaganda
lol
Awesome on several different levels.
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If yu cn rd ths thn u cnt spl wrth a dmn.
Anyone who's spent time using a Unix based system should have no trouble reading that.
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If somebody can't read Paradise Lost, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean they can't read.
It'd be a shame, especially for a British adult. They should know Milton's most important work.
The definition for literacy varies from country to country (and even within the same country) obviously. I'd wager my own country should be yellow or orange rather than light blue as the map shows.
IMO age has its importance. Modern teenagers tend to be much more illiterate than their 60s-70s-80s counterparts...even people who make it to the University fail to spell certain words - something like that would have been impossible a few decades ago.
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Do you have any statistics to back that up?
I'm not entirely sure I doubt it, but I'd want to see evidence.
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If somebody can't read Paradise Lost, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean they can't read.
It'd be a shame, especially for a British adult. They should know Milton's most important work.
I do agree; I was trying to make the distinction between "literate" and "educated". I would easily believe that 99% of people in most Western countries were literate. However, I would also believe that much less than 99% are educated. Hell, I read a lot of books in the 4th and 5th grade that were far above my reading level. I was literate at that age, however, it wasn't until I was further educated that I understood they were more than just "oh cool, a big white whale...I hope he catches him".
So, indeed it would be a shame for anyone to not be familiar with Paradise Lost. They could still be literate though. It would just be the bare minimum of literacy.
A lot of people seem to think that if 99% of people are literate, we're doing very well educating our population. 99% need to be educated, not just literate.
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Do you have any statistics to back that up?
I'm not entirely sure I doubt it, but I'd want to see evidence.
Were you refering to me? Well, I may find enough info on the internet to backup my assumption...in Italian...I have no clue on the situation in other countries.
If you're young enough to deal with a lot of <20 years old people you may surely notice a radical reduction of the average level of literacy/education.
So, indeed it would be a shame for anyone to not be familiar with Paradise Lost. They could still be literate though. It would just be the bare minimum of literacy.
Paradise Lost is a work of very high importance in the British tradition so it'd be a shame for a British to know nothing about it...as far as I know it's one of the basic elements of British literature being taught at school so, if you don't know it, you likely to ignore 95% of literature.
This example isn't global, though - most Italians(example) don't know what Paradise Lost is. Everything depends on the country.
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IMO age has its importance. Modern teenagers tend to be much more illiterate than their 60s-70s-80s counterparts...even people who make it to the University fail to spell certain words - something like that would have been impossible a few decades ago.
Yes, we all know that if someone from Uni misspells a word, then they're stupid and should be kicked out of school.
Were you refering to me? Well, I may find enough info on the internet to backup my assumption...in Italian...I have no clue on the situation in other countries.
How convenient, especially in a topic discussing American illiteracy, not Italian.
If you're young enough to deal with a lot of <20 years old people you may surely notice a radical reduction of the average level of literacy/education.
As a 16 year old, the most that I can truthfully say that that's partially true. It's not America as a whole nation's problem, it's little pockets of population in random places' problem. I have yet to meet even one other student personally that can't read, and my school isn't the best off with state funding. I don't doubt that there's a problem in many areas, it's just that the article distorts this stuff a lot, if not statistically, then by leaving out information.
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I've not read paradise lost, but i'm far from uneducated. I just prefer different books. More Orwell, Shakespear, William Blake, Stephen King and independent authors. Also the singular of British is Briton.
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General Battuta: Roofles!
I thought Paradise Lost was a rock-of-a-sort-band. :nervous:
thesizzler: You know, that depends on what words they misspell. I'll forgive anyone who misspells e.g. 'cacophony' (in fact, I'm not 100% sure of its spelling in my native language...), but mixing up 'your'/'you're' is really embarrassing. (And every time I see someone mix up hangars and hangers I have to have a lie down.)
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Roofles? What I have done that is worthy of roofles?
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The use of Paradise Lost as an example was just metonymy for literature in general. I didn't mean to ostracize anyone who hadn't read the particular work.
Misspellings are compounded by their recurrences. If I misspell a word here or there; no big problem (unless it's a final draft/thesis/published/supposed to have been edited). If I make nothing but stupid mistakes (it's/its, their/there/they're, etc.) and the paper is riddled with them I appear uneducated or at best lazy.
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Saved a drowning badger maybe?
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IMO age has its importance. Modern teenagers tend to be much more illiterate than their 60s-70s-80s counterparts...even people who make it to the University fail to spell certain words - something like that would have been impossible a few decades ago.
Yes, we all know that if someone from Uni misspells a word, then they're stupid and should be kicked out of school.
Completely false. Episodes like that simply lead people to think how bad certain High scools - and, overall, the society - are becoming. I don't blame these individuals who make mistakes, I blame the individuals who turned out be inconclusive teachers. There's a difference.
How convenient, especially in a topic discussing American illiteracy, not Italian.
The fact that I know the current situation of Universities in my country isn't that strange. As I said I may even post stuff - will you understand it? I don't think so.
Furthermore, the topic is also discussing a bit of global illiteracy. When you realize part of the problem is shared in many countries you have the right to extend the subjects, at least for quick references.
I've not read paradise lost, but i'm far from uneducated. I just prefer different books. More Orwell, Shakespear, William Blake, Stephen King and independent authors. Also the singular of British is Briton.
True, mine was a pure reference. I didn't say that people who haven't read Paradise Lost are ignorant, I simply said that people who know nothing about it and/or Milton are bad examples of individuals.
Obviously, I'm thinking of the British environment. Each country has its own must-know writers.
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I found it Fake and very hard to believe.
About 90% in my school pass their English SOL.
2 years ago it was the lows 80's%.
It is only about 10% of the people who can't read. Maybe it the older people or the people who just don't care about a decent education.
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This leads to a simple sounding but very complicated question: If we are to educate somebody, what do we teach him?
What does academia owe to the next generation? We're far past a point now in human development where anybody can learn everything. Why am I taking classes next semester on European and British History? I'm a violinist; it won't benefit me.
Every time I go into a grocery store and see the aisle marked "ten items or less" instead of "ten items or fewer" I ask myself if that's who I'm going to be trying to impress when I graduate. Obviously this is a small example, just meant to illustrate the point. But if my university does a bang up job of educating me, and I pursue that education what guarantee do I have that it will even be recognized in the real world?
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IMO age has its importance. Modern teenagers tend to be much more illiterate than their 60s-70s-80s counterparts...even people who make it to the University fail to spell certain words - something like that would have been impossible a few decades ago.
Yes, we all know that if someone from Uni misspells a word, then they're stupid and should be kicked out of school.
Completely false. Episodes like that simply lead people to think how bad certain High scools - and, overall, the society - are becoming. I don't blame these individuals who make mistakes, I blame the individuals who turned out be inconclusive teachers. There's a difference.
[/sarcasm]
How convenient, especially in a topic discussing American illiteracy, not Italian.
The fact that I know the current situation of Universities in my country isn't that strange. As I said I may even post stuff - will you understand it? I don't think so.
Furthermore, the topic is also discussing a bit of global illiteracy. When you realize part of the problem is shared in many countries you have the right to extend the subjects, at least for quick references.
Okay then. I'll go into FSdisc and start talking about Freelancer, because they both share many similar qualities. If you said what you mean, that should be all right with you.
I've not read paradise lost, but i'm far from uneducated. I just prefer different books. More Orwell, Shakespear, William Blake, Stephen King and independent authors. Also the singular of British is Briton.
True, mine was a pure reference. I didn't say that people who haven't read Paradise Lost are ignorant, I simply said that people who know nothing about it and/or Milton are bad examples of individuals.
Obviously, I'm thinking of the British environment. Each country has its own must-know writers.
Completely false. Just because people haven't read a book that everyone else has read doesn't make them " 'bad' examples " of people, just like not knowing how to read doesn't make someone dumb.
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Completely false. Just because people haven't read a book that everyone else has read doesn't make them " 'bad' examples " of people, just like not knowing how to read doesn't make someone dumb.
In fact I said that mine wasn't a reference to reading Paradise Lost. It was more about knowing the work and its author, even in a generalized way. You should study it at school and if you don't then there's something wrong.
I said Paradise Lost but it can be any other important work and its author...
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Completely false. Just because people haven't read a book that everyone else has read doesn't make them " 'bad' examples " of people, just like not knowing how to read doesn't make someone dumb.
In fact I said that mine wasn't a reference to reading Paradise Lost. It was more about knowing the work and its author, even in a generalized way. You should study it at school and if you don't then there's something wrong.
I said Paradise Lost but it can be any other important work and its author...
Your reasoning is still flawed because there's no one capable of arbitrarily stating which works everyone should know.
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As I stated in an earlier post of mine (and I'm assuming Mobius is using Paradise Lost in the same sense that I am) Paradise Lost is metonymy for literature in general. Fine. Don't read Paradise Lost; but if you want to be considered educated you have to have read SOMETHING. Paradise Lost was initially just an example of a work of literature.
As you and I have both pointed out, this raises the question of what is to be expected of an educated individual? The academic community has unofficially adopted some sort of standard for an education, however. References to older Literature abound in modern literature and even cartoons and comics. If you're educated, you get the allusion and the point is made. If you don't get the allusion, the author probably isn't talking to you. You can claim that an education is what you make it out to be, but the reality is that being able to have an academic discussion entails a certain amount of conformity. If we're talking about politics, and I describe someone as Machiavellian, you either get it or you don't. If you've read The Prince (or at least have a working knowledge of the principles) you understand the point I'm trying to make.
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I found it Fake and very hard to believe.
About 90% in my school pass their English SOL.
2 years ago it was the lows 80's%.
It is only about 10% of the people who can't read. Maybe it the older people or the people who just don't care about a decent education.
In my high school freshman english period there were 40 students, and 10 failed, and ours was one of the better periods, others had failure rates of 35-40%.
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I have noticed an increased amount of poor spelling lately near me (London), even on company signs and shop fronts, which means it must have been proof read not only by the author, but also by the printers...
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I found it Fake and very hard to believe.
About 90% in my school pass their English SOL.
2 years ago it was the lows 80's%.
It is only about 10% of the people who can't read. Maybe it the older people or the people who just don't care about a decent education.
In my high school freshman english period there were 40 students, and 10 failed, and ours was one of the better periods, others had failure rates of 35-40%.
What the hell was your school doing with 40 kids in 1 classroom?
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People nowadays are products of the wazzzup generation. Unfortunately pop culture overshadows established norms and conventions, at least in the more pliable masses.
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To a certain extent it has always been that way.
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I found it Fake and very hard to believe.
About 90% in my school pass their English SOL.
2 years ago it was the lows 80's%.
It is only about 10% of the people who can't read. Maybe it the older people or the people who just don't care about a decent education.
In my high school freshman english period there were 40 students, and 10 failed, and ours was one of the better periods, others had failure rates of 35-40%.
What the hell was your school doing with 40 kids in 1 classroom?
All first year classes are big, but later on the herd gets noticably thinned out so class sizes go way down. 420 of us went in our first year, only 350 actually graduated, and that number would have been even smaller if the school had higher standards (and it was probably higher because we had so many asian kids going there). Yep, a graduation rate of 75% is considered good.......and I went to a rich, good, suburban school, I hate to think what the inner city schools are like.....hell on Earth from what I heard.
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I'd like to know what area of the country considers 75% "good." Even the public schools around here manage in the high 90s, and I can't think of anyone in my class who left the school for reasons other than transferring to another.
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.......and I went to a rich, good, suburban school,
:wtf:
Evidently not. My school is certainly not rich, and the largest freshmen class class I've ever been in was 36 kids (a required sophomore economics class) the smallest being 14 kids (Programming II), and the average being about 34 kids, all with a total school population of 6000. I have no idea how your school managed to put that many kids in one classroom if it was really that good and rich.
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I went to a fairly good high school with ~30 students per class and a graduation rate in the high 80s
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Well it about 360 students on 12 grade (Our school is about 1440 people). About 90% graduated. Each class avg around 20 to 26 students.
I never saw a person who was illiterate but I got some theories about why we got some illiterate people.
1: They hate having a decent education. You know those people who sit at the back of the class not answering teachers questions and/or don't give a crap about their education. ( I know some people at school who do this)
2: They see no use in reading a book.
3: They were never able to learn how to read in
the first place.
edit= grammar ;)
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I'd like to know what area of the country considers 75% "good." Even the public schools around here manage in the high 90s, and I can't think of anyone in my class who left the school for reasons other than transferring to another.
It's considered good only because it is marginally better than the US national average (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0621/p03s02-ussc.html)
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Graduation rates in the largest school districts range from 21.7 percent in Detroit
lol. Couldn't help but laugh.
Oh well, people are retards. Namely the people trying to teach the kids, which is where I think the problem lies. Our collages of education seriously need to rethink their syllabus. Course, a little more effort on the student's behalf couldn't do anything but help.
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Graduation rates in the largest school districts range from 21.7 percent in Detroit
lol. Couldn't help but laugh.
Oh well, people are retards. Namely the people trying to teach the kids, which is where I think the problem lies. Our collages of education seriously need to rethink their syllabus. Course, a little more effort on the student's behalf couldn't do anything but help.
In my experience usually the problem is the students don't want to do any work, so they don't.
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I remember (from the
good-ol' horrid college days) a professor (who taught Comp. II, by the way) that repeatedly made mistakes regarding punctuation and the use of e.g. and i.e..
Those were the days that made me want to start drinking, smoking, and smoking. Fortunately my willpower lasted long enough for me to escape that Hellhole before I developed any serious disorders.
By the way, have you met my niece? Her name is Marcee, and she never ages.
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Well it about 360 students on 12 grade (Our school is about 1440 people). About 90% graduated. Each class avg around 20 to 26 students.
I never saw a person who was illiterate but I got some theories about why we got some illiterate people.
1: They hate having a decent education. You know those people who sit at the back of the class not answering teachers questions and/or don't give a crap about their education. ( I know some people at school who do this)
2: They see no use in reading a book.
3: They were never able to learn how to read in
the first place.
edit= grammar ;)
yea, My grammar not very good. [Thank for pointing it out] But, My reading skills is very good.
Also I think where the school at might affected the literacy rate. Like a school in a gang affected area. You will see more drop outs and illiterate people and if a school is at a low crime area you will not find that much dropouts.
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Graduation rates in the largest school districts range from 21.7 percent in Detroit
lol. Couldn't help but laugh.
Oh well, people are retards. Namely the people trying to teach the kids, which is where I think the problem lies. Our collages of education seriously need to rethink their syllabus. Course, a little more effort on the student's behalf couldn't do anything but help.
In my experience usually the problem is the students don't want to do any work, so they don't.
If you leave the problem solely up to the students to fix, then the problem will never get fixed. If teachers think that telling the students that they have to try in class will get anything fixed, then it's probably those teachers that are actually contributing to this problem.
The teachers need to figure out how to present an adequate amount of information to students in a manner that will make the students want to learn it. The students may very well be the cause of the problem, but only what the teachers do can be the solution.
And BE, if you get that pissed off at such punctuation errors, then I'm surprised that you weren't smoking and drinking before. It might just be me, but there are things that piss me off much more than punctuation errors.
EDIT: Woops. Looks like me and Kosh had a misunderstanding. Kosh was still explaining the problem, and I was on my way towards a solution. But you were right, that is the problem. And if the teachers can't motivate the students...
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As I stated in an earlier post of mine (and I'm assuming Mobius is using Paradise Lost in the same sense that I am) Paradise Lost is metonymy for literature in general. Fine. Don't read Paradise Lost; but if you want to be considered educated you have to have read SOMETHING. Paradise Lost was initially just an example of a work of literature.
As you and I have both pointed out, this raises the question of what is to be expected of an educated individual? The academic community has unofficially adopted some sort of standard for an education, however. References to older Literature abound in modern literature and even cartoons and comics. If you're educated, you get the allusion and the point is made. If you don't get the allusion, the author probably isn't talking to you. You can claim that an education is what you make it out to be, but the reality is that being able to have an academic discussion entails a certain amount of conformity. If we're talking about politics, and I describe someone as Machiavellian, you either get it or you don't. If you've read The Prince (or at least have a working knowledge of the principles) you understand the point I'm trying to make.
Correct.
Well, it's hard to point out what turns people into cultured individuals...but there ARE things people with a decent culture should know...if you don't know that WWII lasted for six years and completely ignore important protagonists of that dramatic period like Churchill and Hitler...well, you're pretty ignorant.
IMO decent people should know things that influence the modern world in a direct way. If you ignore the basics of your society then you don't deserve to do things like casting a vote.
This is just my opinion...
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^
the only problem with rescinding stupid people's right to vote is that they have more guns than the intelligent
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I don't know if any of you guys were aware of this, but in the Detroit Public Schools, the graduation rate is 25%. Thats right, the graduation rate. Not the droupout rate.
Not just in the inner city either, the southern suburbs, (where all the blue collar jobs are, a very depressed area right now) is sinking down to this level. Not only are Detroit parents sending their kids to these schools to escape DPS, but the standards are ridiculously low. An ex of mine was from that area, he didn't even have to TAKE final exams as long as he SHOWED UP to school so many days per semester!
EDIT: Only read to page 2 before posting, I see its dropped even lower!
The problem is certainly the kids, their upbringing, the culture, the area, etc. Its really a different world.
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Well, it's hard to point out what turns people into cultured individuals...but there ARE things people with a decent culture should know...if you don't know that WWII lasted for six years and completely ignore important protagonists of that dramatic period like Churchill and Hitler...well, you're pretty ignorant.
lawl no stupid wwii didn't start in 1939 world war ii started in 1935 when italy invaded ethiopia or you could get really into it and say that wwi and wwii were one war with a re-population break in the middle why are you so ignorant and uncultured
[/now you know why that mentality doesn't mean anything]
Anyways, I believe we've established the fact that the graduation rate is the kids' fault. Now, hypothetically, how would all of you fix it? Or do we feel smug enough just by recognizing the problem and repeating it a bunch of times? (EDIT: Actually, I think that's one of the problems with today's culture. No one tries to fix anything they see not functioning properly)
I personally think that we can fix this issue even while completely ignoring the entire culture issue. I think that if we make classrooms more discussion oriented and grade people on a combination of participation and insight, then things would be a lot better. Now that probably will help with literature courses, maybe a bit with language arts in general, too. In the sciences and maths, things would have to be focused around the teacher a bit more, but I think it would be ideal for a teacher to give the entire class a problem to solve and then have a moderated discussion about how to solve it. It would not only teach problem solving, but it would promote ownership of the material and it would help with self-teaching. Sure, the teacher would have to step in to help everyone. Also, this way the classes would be able to go at their own pace. The classes that are smarter would be able to move on faster, and the slower ones would be able to take their time.
But then you have the people who sleep all day and stuff. What we do with them is you take everyone who you see who just doesn't try and still fails, but you stick them with one teacher. Yes, one teacher to one student. It'd cost a lot, but it'd be worth it. With one teacher the entire day working with one student, eventually any kid would get the point and start working. Eventually he would be re-integrated into the system.
At first review, it seems a bit radical and expensive to just switch to it, but I think that properly developed and with decent execution it be an excellent alternative to much of the system we have now.
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Thanks for providing today's best laugh, Colonel!
Salute!
Mika
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Well, it's hard to point out what turns people into cultured individuals...but there ARE things people with a decent culture should know...if you don't know that WWII lasted for six years and completely ignore important protagonists of that dramatic period like Churchill and Hitler...well, you're pretty ignorant.
lawl no stupid wwii didn't start in 1939 world war ii started in 1935 when italy invaded ethiopia or you could get really into it and say that wwi and wwii were one war with a re-population break in the middle why are you so ignorant and uncultured
[/now you know why that mentality doesn't mean anything]
Anyways, I believe we've established the fact that the graduation rate is the kids' fault. Now, hypothetically, how would all of you fix it? Or do we feel smug enough just by recognizing the problem and repeating it a bunch of times? (EDIT: Actually, I think that's one of the problems with today's culture. No one tries to fix anything they see not functioning properly)
I personally think that we can fix this issue even while completely ignoring the entire culture issue. I think that if we make classrooms more discussion oriented and grade people on a combination of participation and insight, then things would be a lot better. Now that probably will help with literature courses, maybe a bit with language arts in general, too. In the sciences and maths, things would have to be focused around the teacher a bit more, but I think it would be ideal for a teacher to give the entire class a problem to solve and then have a moderated discussion about how to solve it. It would not only teach problem solving, but it would promote ownership of the material and it would help with self-teaching. Sure, the teacher would have to step in to help everyone. Also, this way the classes would be able to go at their own pace. The classes that are smarter would be able to move on faster, and the slower ones would be able to take their time.
But then you have the people who sleep all day and stuff. What we do with them is you take everyone who you see who just doesn't try and still fails, but you stick them with one teacher. Yes, one teacher to one student. It'd cost a lot, but it'd be worth it. With one teacher the entire day working with one student, eventually any kid would get the point and start working. Eventually he would be re-integrated into the system.
At first review, it seems a bit radical and expensive to just switch to it, but I think that properly developed and with decent execution it be an excellent alternative to much of the system we have now.
Good idea. What about if a person who don't care about his/her education.
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But then you have the people who sleep all day and stuff. What we do with them is you take everyone who you see who just doesn't try and still fails, but you stick them with one teacher. Yes, one teacher to one student. It'd cost a lot, but it'd be worth it. With one teacher the entire day working with one student, eventually any kid would get the point and start working. Eventually he would be re-integrated into the system.
Oh and you stop letting people drop out. That rule is just stupid.
EDIT: Maybe the parents could do something earlier on in the kids life to counter this apathy, too. What's different about the way kids are being raised 14 years ago as opposed to 40 years ago?
EDIT2: Either way, I don't think there's much that we can expect to get done with the kids doing anything on their own. To be frank, you can't expect any kid in any part of the world to independently decide to stop completely slacking off and start applying themselves in full in school. A child's psychology just doesn't work that way. It might have been able to if we had caught the problem before things got out of hand 20 years ago, but we're beyond the point of the kids fixing the problems without us having to touch normal teaching/parenting methods.
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My school is 1200 strong, and I have about 25 people in each class. While I understand that classes like drama and gym are compulsory to try and "discover hidden talent" or some BS like that, I don't understand why that rule applies to all. I maintain marks in the mid-high nineties in math/science, but only in the mid-low nineties in the artsy/physical classes. It's dragging my marks down having to take these classes, and most of the time I finish my drama assignment within 10 minutes of the 1.25 hour class and read for the rest. I'd much rather be applying myself to learning Java or learning complex math than trying to imagine that I'm Optimus Prime.
And also, on the OT, the Canadian school system shunts students along until grade 10 with their "Two Year Plan". Don't pass this year? No problem. You're guaranteed to pass next year, EVEN IF YOU DON'T ATTEND A SINGLE DAY. Literally. And it's also impossible to fail, you have to fail two core subjects (English, Math, Science, Social Studies) AND have your parents permission to fail. And then once these students arrive in grade 10, they have to build on concepts that they never learned, because they were shunted along before they learned them. It's idiotic.
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And if the teachers can't motivate the students...
So if the teacher gives the student homework, and the student doesn't do it, beyond giving bad marks and calling parents there isn't anything else than can be done. To just blame this soley on the teacher is grossly irresponsible. Everyone has to do their part to make it work: parents, teachers, and students.
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And BE, if you get that pissed off at such punctuation errors, then I'm surprised that you weren't smoking and drinking before. It might just be me, but there are things that piss me off much more than punctuation errors.
It took me a while to find that. :nervous:
I was using that as one example of many. If the Comp. II professors were like that, imagine the rest of them.
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EDIT: Maybe the parents could do something earlier on in the kids life to counter this apathy, too. What's different about the way kids are being raised 14 years ago as opposed to 40 years ago?
The rod? :nod:
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So if the teacher gives the student homework, and the student doesn't do it, beyond giving bad marks and calling parents there isn't anything else than can be done. To just blame this soley on the teacher is grossly irresponsible. Everyone has to do their part to make it work: parents, teachers, and students.
QFT.
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The teacher has no incentive because he / she is underpaid
The parent has no incentive because either they want to do more with their kid, and spend quality time with them instead of helping with homework, or, more likely, they have as little to do with their kid as possible
The student has no immediate incentive to do anything because it seems like the whole world sucks all the way up and down so why bother.
Until at least some of those issues are addressed the only way for the education system to go is down.
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Cut child allowance and give a £10,000 bonus at the age of 18 for anyone who graduates after a test. Then we'll see motivated parents. :p
Seriously though I tend to agree with Mars' rather pessimistic statement to be honest.
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I couldn't care this is Darwinism in effect, kids with improper attitudes are destined to be the road-sweepers and trolley pushers in life if they can't be bothered to develop the foresight.
Kids that want to learn and succeed, Will.
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lawl no stupid wwii didn't start in 1939 world war ii started in 1935 when italy invaded ethiopia or you could get really into it and say that wwi and wwii were one war with a re-population break in the middle why are you so ignorant and uncultured
Wrong. WWII started in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles, which turned the German population into a full-of-anger one. Seriously, what are you up to? :doubt:
The teacher has no incentive because he / she is underpaid
Sorry, but I partially disagree. As far as I'm concerned astronomic salaries(if compared with average ones for a given kind of job) influence the results in a bad way. I don't know why, but people tend to act strangely when their salaries are high... they become arrogant and don't give a lot of importance to their job and the people they interact with. Politicians are a superb example - incredibly rich ones are good for nothing, at least here.
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And if the teachers can't motivate the students...
So if the teacher gives the student homework, and the student doesn't do it, beyond giving bad marks and calling parents there isn't anything else than can be done. To just blame this soley on the teacher is grossly irresponsible. Everyone has to do their part to make it work: parents, teachers, and students.
I've been trying to move on from the blame game for a while. Unfortunately, it seems as though you just love to do this. If you had read the paragraph in its entirety, you'd realize that although it in all probability is the students' fault, there is at this point nothing we can reasonably expect the students on their own to fix the problem. We know that we need to re-motivate the student body, but there is no way for the student body to re-motivate itself. Obviously if there was, we wouldn't be in this situation.
The teacher has no incentive because he / she is underpaid
I disagree. Like presidency, if you're doing it for money/incentives, you shouldn't be doing this job. A teacher not teaching to the fullest of his/her ability is just as unreasonable as a student not working to the fullest of his/her ability. Which is partially why I think teacher quality plays a role in this.
The parent has no incentive because either they want to do more with their kid, and spend quality time with them instead of helping with homework, or, more likely, they have as little to do with their kid as possible
That's really an unreasonable reason for 99% of all cases. My parents, and the parents of everyone that I know, would put homework and school before spending personal time with kids, however unwillingly it is. But you are right in some form; they've got to be doing something wrong here.
It's not that they don't have incentives, it's just that many of them don't know how to motivate it. I won't touch on this area much past the fact that I think that good parenting good help solve this problem, because I'm not a parent.
The student has no immediate incentive to do anything because it seems like the whole world sucks all the way up and down so why bother.
This is true, or at least in a practical sense. We must persuade the student body that an education is essential in most facets of life the career that they are going into later in life.
I couldn't care this is Darwinism in effect, kids with improper attitudes are destined to be the road-sweepers and trolley pushers in life if they can't be bothered to develop the foresight.
Kids that want to learn and succeed, Will.
That is precisely what the problem is, right there. People are starting to be apathetic about these things. Everyone is completely capable of leading a perfectly educated, rich, and full life, and everyone everywhere would be better off if they did. It's just that they're not. Look at Detroit: Do we really need a city where 3 out of 4 people are garbage men or street cleaners? No. That's doing no good to anyone at all, except for maybe the 1 out of 4 people who do graduate high school. And if it's them we're looking to please, then this thread is going to grow obsolete pretty fast.
Come to think of it, Dekker, why do you suppose people receive a public education? Is it to prepare them to get a job when they're older, and make a good living, or to just to simply learn, and grow as a person?
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I disagree. Like presidency, if you're doing it for money/incentives, you shouldn't be doing this job. A teacher not teaching to the fullest of his/her ability is just as unreasonable as a student not working to the fullest of his/her ability. Which is partially why I think teacher quality plays a role in this.
So you would take advantage of teachers' desire to help students by underpaying them?
Everyone is completely capable of leading a perfectly educated, rich, and full life, and everyone everywhere would be better off if they did.
No, the planet doesn't have the resources for that to work.
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I disagree. Like presidency, if you're doing it for money/incentives, you shouldn't be doing this job. A teacher not teaching to the fullest of his/her ability is just as unreasonable as a student not working to the fullest of his/her ability. Which is partially why I think teacher quality plays a role in this.
So you would take advantage of teachers' desire to help students by underpaying them?
Personally, I would give them a very livable salary, given the pivotal role they play in society. I don't know how others do it, though. Given the amount of complaining, though, it's clear that some people are.
Everyone is completely capable of leading a perfectly educated, rich, and full life, and everyone everywhere would be better off if they did.
No, the planet doesn't have the resources for that to work.
Okay, you got me there. Let me change what I said with that information in mind: Most people are reasonably capable of utilizing the information received in their education in a worthwhile, effective manner. Whether they do or not is completely up to them.
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The teacher has no incentive because he / she is underpaid
Pet peeve. Teachers should be paid for their performance. California is a state run by the teacher's union more or less, which has resulted in the schools turning to ****. Giving the teachers more money is worthless, and we've proved it quite thoroughly by now. They're not held to any accountable standards because nobody's ever figured out a reasonable means of doing so.
Back to the first page; their conception of "illiterate" and "not being able to read" are not the same thing, folks.
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I've been trying to move on from the blame game for a while. Unfortunately, it seems as though you just love to do this.
Didn't look like it to me. Mars and I were pointing out what should be obvious fact that so many people seem to miss.
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I've been trying to move on from the blame game for a while. Unfortunately, it seems as though you just love to do this.
Didn't look like it to me. Mars and I were pointing out what should be obvious fact that so many people seem to miss.
Oh sorry, it looks like you disregarded the post where I had a plan that eliminates this entire issue and all of my other posts past the first two sentences. My bad.
Let's say this for a moment: You're right. It's the student's fault. The poor teachers and parents were doing reasonably fine*. (If I'm understanding you correctly, this is where you leave off) Now what?
The student should try harder? Why should he? Because people all over the world think he's stupid? He knows he's stupid and he's already stopped caring. So we need to make him care, right? Obviously. But how? This is where I'm at, or where I was trying to be. I sketched out a preliminary solution that it seems like all but a few ignored, and while in retrospect it was fairly vague on the most concerning issue (a very bad thing indeed), it was bounds past everyone else's ideas.
So picking up where I left off, we have the most troublesome apathetic students in extremely low student-teacher ratio situations, allowing for much more personal attention. Furthermore, we have them there all day, allowing the teacher much more freedom and opportunity to fully work with the student on a dynamic level. That means the teacher can get to know the student, and completely base the schedule off of that. Now the issue with the student is that they don't pay attention, don't do homework, don't think, let their mind wander, etc. This is where the teacher gives the student some ownership of his/her education. The teacher offers the student a clear, poignant, reasonable list of things to work on, perhaps not all focusing completely on academics. Some would be discussions of current events, foreign affairs, others would be geometry, logic, American literature, writing, and so on and so forth. All in all, ideal conversation in the group would be about 60% teacher talking, 40% student talking. The teacher would make the student reply and think, and if need be, do the homework right in front of the teacher just to make sure it's getting done.
They'd continue on this course of action until they found some specific area that the student was particularly interested in, and the teacher and the student would teach each other about it, subject permitting. They'd focus probably the largest chunk of their time on that subject, just to have at least one specialty area, one thing the student could be "good at". They'd continue focusing on other areas, and eventually with enough focus and time, the student should get it and start working, and eventually be re-integrated to everyone else. Like I said before, it'd be expensive, but IMHO an education is one of the most important thing a society can give future generations, and it would be worth it.
*aside from the fact that the teacher's students are failing and the parent's children are being delinquents. Part of being a teacher and part of being a parent is knowing how to effectively deal with that, and it's evident that they don't know how (or they just plain aren't).
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Where would you get enough teachers for this to be anywhere near plausible?
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That's the thing. We can't just have public universities down the requirement for education degrees, because that would degrade teacher quality overall. Maybe we could have completely different job positions open up, have public universities pioneer new education system for these things. Maybe a new market for these jobs, while similar to a normal teacher's, would trick people into feigning interest in the area. But that wouldn't last long enough to sustain it, pretty much at all. It's not like we can randomly conscript people off the streets to do this, and the parents of these kids are probably themselves relatively uneducated, or probably busy with jobs.
If we had unlimited resources, I think it'd be a decent plan, but we obviously don't. I'd be really interested to see the results of this idea if it were attempted at just one school, though. We actually might not even have to do it at every school everywhere. I know that in downtown Detroit, there was an over-abundance of schools, all had too few students, they could consolidate those. Although it would be impossible to get all 75% of failing students through, I could easily see 25% additional passing.
Maybe we could make people working for a degree in education do an additional year of college and just have this as their final year? That would guarantee that the teacher be young and have somewhat of an understanding of where the student is coming from, attitude-wise. I'm not really sure if we could force universities to do that, though.
In fact, we very well might not need to do something as drastic as this at all. A viable solution in all probability exists at a class-group level.
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Scrap the current system it doesn't work. Go back to the good old ways of apprenticeships. Make them pick a trade and learn how to do it by watching and doing. After a year or so they start getting paid if they can do the job. They can't do it then no pay. If they don't like the jobs available then they can work to learn a new trade.
If I learned one thing in college it's you can't learn from books you need to do it.
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Apprenticeships are a good way to go in my opinion, and an encouragement to learn a trade before continuing to high education if you so wish, that way you move average University age to the mid-late 20's. Those who don't want to go for higher qualifications will have a trade that they can learn and use, and those that go to University have worked in the 'real world' and have some concept of what is required from an employer.
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The teacher has no incentive because he / she is underpaid
Pet peeve. Teachers should be paid for their performance. California is a state run by the teacher's union more or less, which has resulted in the schools turning to ****. Giving the teachers more money is worthless, and we've proved it quite thoroughly by now. They're not held to any accountable standards because nobody's ever figured out a reasonable means of doing so.
Back to the first page; their conception of "illiterate" and "not being able to read" are not the same thing, folks.
I do agree with that, but Bush's No Child Left Behind didn't really adress this properly.
Teachers, by and large however, are paid less than your average grocery store worker, all things being equal.
Of course, I live in Colorado, which is pretty bad as far as education goes
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Scrap the current system it doesn't work. Go back to the good old ways of apprenticeships. Make them pick a trade and learn how to do it by watching and doing. After a year or so they start getting paid if they can do the job. They can't do it then no pay. If they don't like the jobs available then they can work to learn a new trade.
If I learned one thing in college it's you can't learn from books you need to do it.
I think those of us going into academia might take issue with this. For some people, reading books is the "doing."
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The problem is not the teachers, the parents, or the students. It's the teaching model.
Students in the US aren't taught, they are told. They aren't expected to learn, they're expected to memorize. They're not expected to analyze, they're expected to recall.
This, and only this, is what's wrong with our educational system.
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The problem is not the teachers, the parents, or the students. It's the teaching model.
Students in the US aren't taught, they are told. They aren't expected to learn, they're expected to memorize. They're not expected to analyze, they're expected to recall.
This, and only this, is what's wrong with our educational system.
My US military history class, writing class, band class, and programing class all beg to differ with that statement.
But you pretty much got it dead on for Math and Chemistry. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied from class to class, or even from teacher to teacher.
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This, and only this, is what's wrong with our educational system.
How so?
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Come to think of it, Dekker, why do you suppose people receive a public education? Is it to prepare them to get a job when they're older, and make a good living, or to just to simply learn, and grow as a person?
The majority of people recieve a public education because it's the only avenue available to them. Whether they choose to capitilise on that oppertunity is a different matter.
I chose to, i'm sure that some people here had different routes on the learning highway. But some people can't be bothered with the hike.
That's why they're stuck on the hard shoulder getting raped by the <metaphor>"truckers of poor education" <metaphor>
Quick note, i don't apply this view to all people, those with learning difficulties that acknowledge them and seek help are entitled to some lenience. THose that have learning difficulties and hide it as "bravado" are just as deserving of failure as those that are just plain lazy....
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My US military history class, writing class, band class, and programing class all beg to differ with that statement.
But you pretty much got it dead on for Math and Chemistry. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied from class to class, or even from teacher to teacher.
The entirety of my primary and secondary classes were this way. It wasn't until I got to college when I finally started learning instead of hearing others telling me what is what because the book says it is.
How so?
When students don't think about what they're seeing and hearing, they're not learning. Many say it is the lack of funding that is causing this deficit. But fact of the matter is that the foundations of any basic subject (certain parts of science and modern history excluded) don't change often enough to need books that are newer than even 20 years old. Many say it is because of a lower income. This is rubbish. Money doesn't affect how the brain dissects information. Many say the students don't care. No ****? Listening for hours a day with no inquisitive aspect to the learning process equates to a dull and repetitive task, rather than an interesting and dynamic experience.
By confronting a student with one of two greatly important questions (why? how?), it ensures that the student understands the material. Also, when a teacher uses the two most important parts of education, they can essentially teach why and how something works by showing why and how it doesn't work. Also, while the who, what, where, and when are primarily taught, they are only as relevant as the why and how allow them to be. Outside the why and how, they are nothing more than knowledge.
There is a significant difference between knowledge and understanding.
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For the most part, all of my high school classes, from two different high schools, had plenty of thinking involved . . . possibly excluding math.
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My US military history class, writing class, band class, and programing class all beg to differ with that statement.
But you pretty much got it dead on for Math and Chemistry. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied from class to class, or even from teacher to teacher.
The entirety of my primary and secondary classes were this way. It wasn't until I got to college when I finally started learning instead of hearing others telling me what is what because the book says it is.
That makes sense. I don't have books for any of those classes but Math and Chemistry.
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When students don't think about what they're seeing and hearing, they're not learning. *snip*
Perhaps, and yet many of the best scientists and engineers in the world were educated this way. Even the captured Nazi scientists we brought over were educated in this fashion, and they took us to the moon.
There is a significant difference between knowledge and understanding.
Yes, but there is also a significant difference between making education interesting and making it useless. If kids are spending so much time with their "learning activities", that means less time to actually teach the subject thoroughly.
Many say the students don't care. No ****? Listening for hours a day with no inquisitive aspect to the learning process equates to a dull and repetitive task, rather than an interesting and dynamic experience.
Then again aren't most jobs like this? Just saying "well it isn't fun enough" really does a disservice to our children because it encourages laziness.
EDIT: And I also want to point out that lately a surprisingly large amount of american innovation is actually coming from the engineers and scientists we have been importing from places that do have an unfun edumacation system.